Any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of the common general knowledge in the field.
A sous vide device (French for “under vacuum”) is a method of cooking food in sealed plastic bags in a water bath. The purpose of sous vide cooking is too cook an item, evenly, but over cook it and to retain, moisture and flavour. Sous Vide uses temperature considerably lower then covenantal cooking. Sous Vide cooking of meet is capable of hydrolysing tough connective tissue into gelatine without heating the protein in the meat to the point that they denature and become tough. Sous vide cooking of vegetables allows the vegetables to be cooked below the boiling point of water while maintain a firm texture. Food places in a sous vide water bath, cannot become hotter than the bath, it is in. Accordingly, sous vide prevents overcooking and promotes even cooking with irregularly shaped or thick items.
Because of the long cooking times, it would be an advantage is sous vide cooking to cook multiple and different food items simultaneously. Because sous vide cooking requires submersion of the food in a bag from which, the air the air has been excluded, it would be advantageous to provide a sous vide cooker with a built in or integral vacuum pump. Further, because the exclusion of the air in the bag is sometimes incomplete, it is an advantage to provide a sous vide cooker that can submerge bags that tend to float.